West Bengal court denies bail to AMRI directors

KOLKATA: A West Bengal court on Friday denied bail to the arrested directors of AMRI Hospital, where a pre-dawn blaze killed 93 people earlier this month, and remanded six of them to judicial custody till Jan. 5 next year.Chief Judicial Magistrate CH Karim of Alipore court (South 24 Parganas) also ordered that the seventh director RS Agarwal be interrogated in the presence of the attending doctor at the state run SSKM Hospital where he is admitted now.Agarwal, one of the seven AMRI directors arrested on Dec. 9, hours after the blaze at the hospital in South Kolkata’s Dhakuria area, has been kept under arrest at SSKM. The six other arrested directors of the hospital, including Shrachi Group chairman SK Todi and his counterpart in the Emami Group RS Goenka, were sent to 14 days judicial custody till Jan. 5.Police custody of the hospital’s senior vice president (projects) S. Upadhyay and senior manager (maintenance) Sanjiv Pal — arrested on Dec. 13 — were extended by four days till Monday.Meanwhile, union Minister of State for Health Sudip Bandyopadhyay has urged private players in health care to raise standards of infrastructure to avert incidents like the recent fire tragedy at Kolkata’s AMRI Hospital.